In that particular case, “never happened” has some weird ontological baggage. If a simulated consciousness is still conscious, then isn’t its simulated past still a past?
Perhaps “didn’t happen” in the sense that its future reality will not conform to its memory-informed expectations, but it seems like, if those memories form a coherent ‘past’, then in a simulationist sense that past did happen, even if it wasn’t simulated with perfect fidelity.
Or, a Boltzmann brain that flickered into existence with memories of a past that never happened.
In that particular case, “never happened” has some weird ontological baggage. If a simulated consciousness is still conscious, then isn’t its simulated past still a past?
Perhaps “didn’t happen” in the sense that its future reality will not conform to its memory-informed expectations, but it seems like, if those memories form a coherent ‘past’, then in a simulationist sense that past did happen, even if it wasn’t simulated with perfect fidelity.